Part Four - The Fall of the Big Pine

How strange an experience for her altogether, to be able to stand firm
against noise and urgent clamor and confusion, and to see, in spite of
it, what she was looking at; to see, back of the powerful magnetic
personality, the undeveloped and tyrannical soul, the cramped mind
without experience or conception of breadth and freedom in the relations
between human beings; to be able to hear Vincent cry out on her with
that fierce, masterful certainty of himself, that she was acting from
cowed and traditional-minded motives and not to believe a word of it,
because it was not true; not even to feel the scared throb of alarm at
the very idea that it might be true; to have it make no impression on
her save pity that Vincent should be imprisoned in a feeling of which
possession was so great a part that failure to possess turned all the
rest to poison and sickness.

What had happened to her, in truth, that she had this new steadfastness?
She had told Vincent he could not understand it. Did she understand it
herself? She leaned her chin on her two hands looking deep into the
green recesses of the forest. High above her head, a wind swayed the
tops of the pines and sang loudly; but down between the great brown
columns of their trunks, not a breath stirred. The thick-set,
myriad-leaved young maples held all their complicated delicately-edged
foliage motionless in perfect calm.